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About The IGF

IndieGames.com is presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference. The company (producer of the Game Developers Conference series, Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.

When I heard of the 48 hour long OlliOlli SkateJam, and its one-word theme 'skate', I started to outline some realistic expectations related to a hypothetical game that I would've enjoyed. Turns out, that I was subconsciously thinking of something really close to Big Green Pillow's entry Manuel. A hectic isometric endless runner that shines particularly thanks to its clean pixel art and intuitive game mechanics.

Little was shown in the teaser trailer for Robot Invader's new horror game, Dead Secret, beyond a bit of the location. Wandering through an abandoned house told me little about the storyline, but the Japanese Noh masks and the creeping sense of oncoming dread still promised that something wasn't right with the world. Now, they've released a longer trailer that says a little bit more about what is going on in the game, and also on what to fear in it. Most horror games are content to make players afraid of the dark, but Dead Secret is going to make you afraid of the light as well.

Kristoffer Jetmundsen and Martin Kvale are two close friends who share the same passion for game development and are working together on the upcoming puzzle platformer Little Big Mansion. The game will be coming out on Steam this April, so we took the opportunity to ask them questions about its humble game jam origins, how the idea of switching the size of objects came about, and why they decided to turn the prototype of Little Big Mansion into a full game.

Terry Cavanagh's latest creation is quite an unusual one, as it combines several aspects of various genres that you wouldn't normally expect. There's a lot of strategic thinking involved, a grasp of mathematics helps, too, but to keep it within everyone's reach, tasty burgers have been added to complete the work. Grab Them By The Eyes is a turn-based strategy game, it's free to play, and its significant difficulty will keep you hooked way beyond the first playthrough.

Everything breathes in Wolfbrew Games' hack and slasher, Slain!, even if it shouldn't. The creatures that trudge across the dead moors, petrified woods, and towers drenched in crimson look natural in motion, showcasing a care in their animation that somehow makes them look even more unnatural. It's unsettling to watch a skeleton moving toward you, flaming sword in hand, as it breathes in and out through lungs it no longer has. Every enemy and location in the game shows this level of detail in their design, moving in unseen winds or dripping with strange fluid, and that can't be cheap. To finish up this beautiful, but sickening, game, Wolfbrew has started a Kickstarter for funding.

Crescent Moon Games has created something beautiful in The Deer God. It's not just the 3D/pixel hybrid graphics that pass by in parallax motion as you go, though that's pretty enough. The game is about a hunter who has been turned into a deer by the deer god. Armed only with the knowledge that he will remain a deer until he redeems himself, he sets out on a journey across the land. It's a story-light, procedurally generated platformer in which every choice to kill or run is a matter of both karma and survival, with potentially both short- and long-term effects on the game.

Arguing with someone online, even if it's just one person, can be one of the most exhausting, distracting things you will ever do. The constant, useless back-and-forth of fighting with someone who, in all likelihood, is either an idiot or just looking to agitate you, will whittle you down like nothing else. If more than one person dogpiles onto you, though, best of luck spending an otherwise productive day trying to change the minds of people you don't even care about. Well, now you can do all that for fun in Nonadecimal Creative's Social Justice Warriors, which has just released on Steam.

IndieGames and FreekeyFridays bring you another set of free indie games. Freekeyfridays was created as a way to garner exposure for indies through giving away a mix of well-known indie games and up-and-coming titles. This week's games are Retrobooster with soundtrack (Humble, Windows, Linux), Ancient Planet (Steam, Windows, Mac) and Ascendant (Steam, Windows, Linux, Mac).

Standpoint is a first-person puzzle platformer, and as is common for that kind of game, it hinges on a simple mechanic. By targeting a nearby section of wall or ceiling and left-clicking on it, gravity shifts so that the targeted wall is down. The game uses its gravity warping mechanic well and does so in service of its narrative, which is about dealing with grief.

Jump'N'Shoot Attack seems to have been built out of pure contempt for many of the things going on in the mobile phone game market. Its developer, FreakZone Games, says that players are tired of virtual buttons and Free to Play models that find endlessly creative ways to beg for money. With their experience creating challenging, quality action games like Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures and MANOS: The Hands of Fate, they're hoping to bring solid shooting and jumping to phones this March, doing away with clunky inputs and hateful microtransactions in the process.